Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel-winning author and peace activist, dies at 88

Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature and also known as an activist for the anti-war Constitution and anti-nuclear energy, has died of old age, publisher Kodansha Ltd said on Monday. He was 88 years old.

Oe, one of Japan’s most celebrated authors of the post-World War II era, spearheaded a civic movement calling for the removal of nuclear plants in his late 70s, in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster caused by by a massive earthquake and tsunami.

“Repeating the mistake by displaying, through the construction of nuclear reactors, the same disrespect for human life is the worst possible betrayal of the memory of the (atomic bomb) victims of Hiroshima,” Oe wrote in an article. for the American magazine The New Yorker. dated 10 days after the triple disaster.

Born in 1935 in the western Ehime prefecture, Oe made his writing debut in 1957 while studying French literature at the University of Tokyo.

He received Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize for Literature the following year at age 23 for “The Catch,” a short story about the capture of a black American airman in a Japanese village during the war.

In 1994, he became the second Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Yasunari Kawabata. “With poetic force (Oe) creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the current human situation,” the Swedish Academy said in awarding the prize.

The author garnered critical acclaim worldwide, with many of his novels, including “The Silent Cry,” translated into multiple languages.

Oe wrote several works that reflect his personal experience as the father of composer Hikari Oe, who was born with disabilities. Among them is his novel “A Personal Matter,” published in 1964, in which he depicts a man struggling to come to terms with the birth of a brain-damaged child in a failed marriage.

He also wrote reports on the horrors of war and nuclear weapons, “Hiroshima Notes” in 1965 and “Okinawa Notes” in 1970.

Oe and the late literary critic Shuichi Kato, among others, founded an anti-war civic group “Article 9 Association” in 2004, urging the government to uphold the article of the Constitution that renounces war.

After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Oe became a co-organizer of a campaign that collected signatures from millions of people demanding an end to nuclear power plants, and participated in anti-nuclear power demonstrations attended by tens of thousands of people.

According to Kodansha, Oe died in the early morning of March 3, and his family has already held a funeral. The publisher said a memorial service will be held later.